How to Delegate

by Contributor - Updated September 26, 2017

How to Delegate. The skill of effectively delegating can make you a better employee or manager and team player. It also prevents you from overworking yourself to the point of exhaustion. Effective delegating requires some skill since you never want to appear to simply be dumping work on others. Learn how to delegate by reading the following tips.

Get the right mindset. Stop thinking that you're the only person who can do a job well. Start trusting that others will do an equally good job, if not a better job, regardless of whether or not they've made a mistake in the past.

Believe that other workers are looking for new responsibilities and a chance to prove their skills. Most people realize that when it comes to work, the short term time investment required to complete a delegated task will provide bigger pay-offs in the future.

Make a plan determining how you're going to delegate, what you're going to delegate and to whom you're going to delegate. Lists are a good idea and prevent you from haphazardly delegating and making poor decisions in the process.

Delegate the job itself, not how it should be done. Clearly let people know the purpose of the job they've been delegated to do and what you would like the desired outcome to be. Set deadlines and ask for progress reports.

Spread tasks around so that other people get a chance to complete new jobs and receive new training.

Manage the delegation process. Other people may be doing various tasks, but you're still responsible for the final outcome. Make sure things get finished without micro-managing and giving the impression you don't trust your delegates. Be there should they need help with anything.

Provide praise on a job well done. Your delegates need to know how they did. If they did well and everything went great, then tell them. If there were areas for improvement, they need to know that too.

Tips

Avoid delegating any unnecessary tasks. If you can eliminate a job, it's better to do so than give a job to someone just for the sake of saying you've delegated.

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